London pollution & ULEZ

Kenai · 28 Jul 2023 at 21:00

jaybee said:
Yeah but it's £12.50 EVERY. SINGLE. DAY they use the car inside the zone. Even if you only drive a few times a week in it, that's another £125 odd a month in a country where everything else is going up. For those that used their cars daily in affected cars it's about £275 a month to continue doing so just for week days.

I'm talking about customers being put off taking their car to a particular business for an infrequent, potentially even one off, provision of a service.

Sure, a few of the customers who live locally might get rid of their cars and you'll be relying on a bit more business from further afield but when it comes to tuning cars, I think it's reasonably common that people will travel a bit to get to a preferred specialist. A £12.50 charge for someone to be bringing their car to you shouldn't be enough to kill off your business unless it's teetering on the edge of viability in the first place.

jaybee · 28 Jul 2023 at 21:05

Kenai said:
I'm talking about customers being put off taking their car to a particular business for an infrequent, potentially even one off, provision of a service.

Sure, a few of the customers who live locally might get rid of their cars and you'll be relying on a bit more business from further afield but when it comes to tuning cars, I think it's reasonably common that people will travel a bit to get to a preferred specialist. A £12.50 charge for someone to be bringing their car to you shouldn't be enough to kill off your business unless it's teetering on the edge of viability in the first place.

Agreed, yeah when you're plucking a couple of K for dem overnight partz from japan, £12.50 is not gonna hurt.

adam cool dude · 28 Jul 2023 at 21:08

Kenai said:
I'm talking about customers being put off taking their car to a particular business for an infrequent, potentially even one off, provision of a service.

Sure, a few of the customers who live locally might get rid of their cars and you'll be relying on a bit more business from further afield but when it comes to tuning cars, I think it's reasonably common that people will travel a bit to get to a preferred specialist. A £12.50 charge for someone to be bringing their car to you shouldn't be enough to kill off your business unless it's teetering on the edge of viability in the first place.

No but said person might go somewhere else out of principle rather than cost. To me the £12.50 is irrelevant. It is the principal of it that would put me off.

Kenai · 28 Jul 2023 at 21:13

adam cool dude said:
No but said person might go somewhere else out of principle rather than cost. To me the £12.50 is irrelevant. It is the principal of it that would put me off.

I think you'd be in a minority.

If I wanted my car worked on and the best place to do it happened to be in the ULEZ zone, it wouldn't even enter my thought process to take it somewhere else for the sake of a few quid.

Edit - and lets not forget, this is only an issue for people with pretty old petrol vehicles or moderately old diesel vehicles in the first place, so a minority of a minority. If that'd be enough to sink someone's tuning business, it wasn't far from death in the first place IMO.

adam cool dude · 28 Jul 2023 at 21:18

Kenai said:
I think you'd be in a minority.

If I wanted my car worked on and the best place to do it happened to be in the ULEZ zone, it wouldn't even enter my thought process to take it somewhere else for the sake of a few quid.

Edit - and lets not forget, this is only an issue for people with pretty old petrol vehicles or moderately old diesel vehicles in the first place, so a minority of a minority. If that'd be enough to sink someone's tuning business, it wasn't far from death in the first place IMO.

The average age of UK cars is ten years old and plenty of that will be diesels lower than Euro 6. The specialist garage was merely an example. Your average Joe garage might be greatly effected.

Kenai · 28 Jul 2023 at 21:28

adam cool dude said:
The average age of UK cars is ten years old and plenty of that will be diesels lower than Euro 6. The specialist garage was merely an example. Your average Joe garage might be greatly effected.

Your average joe garage will be servicing the cars of the locals. If they all get something a bit newer, no worries, service that. If they keep their non compliant car, service that, after all they've obviously decided to just pay the charges anyway. If they're local but outside the ULEZ border and would be affected, then you're back to whether a one off £12.50 is really enough to make someone choose to take their car elsewhere.

I genuinely think people are blowing this way way out of proportion.

It sucks for people that are faced with replacing their car that can't really afford it and I sympathise with them but the idea it's going to cause the collapse of businesses here there and everywhere I just don't see happening at all.

adam cool dude · 28 Jul 2023 at 21:35

Kenai said:
I genuinely think people are blowing this way way out of proportion.

It sucks for people that are faced with replacing their car that can't really afford it and I sympathise with them but the idea it's going to cause the collapse of businesses here there and everywhere I just don't see happening at all.

My 1995 Toyota Celica GT-Four would need to be sold if I lived in the zone despite only doing 3k miles tops a year. 60 trips a year would cost me £700 for the pleasure. God forbid if I left the area for longer than a day and I would have to pay double.

Obviously I am a minority but it would have been nice to have some more thorough exceptions as mister builder with his Euro 6 van doing thousands of miles a year without needing to pay is causing far more trouble.

Slam62 · 28 Jul 2023 at 21:36

Some time there’s going to be serious trouble over this sort of thing. The real causes of global pollution are not being touched. This country is extremely small fry.

It’s so sad.

Malevolence · 28 Jul 2023 at 21:41

adam cool dude said:
My 1995 Toyota Celica GT-Four

Chuk_Chuk · 28 Jul 2023 at 22:07

bigmike20vt said:
because ICE cars never set on fire....?

It’s not common for ICE Cars to combust spontaneously.
Also the fire is easier to put out in an ICE car.

delta0 · 28 Jul 2023 at 22:18

Chuk_Chuk said:
It’s not common for ICE Cars to combust spontaneously.
Also the fire is easier to put out in an ICE car.

Does this myth really need to peddled still. You are way more likely in an already unlikely event to be burnt to a crisp in an ICE than an EV.

Chuk_Chuk · 28 Jul 2023 at 22:30

delta0 said:
Does this myth really need to peddled still. You are way more likely in an already unlikely event to be burnt to a crisp in an ICE than an EV.

Why would an ICE vehicle randomly combust? Without some sort of external trigger.

delta0 · 28 Jul 2023 at 22:51

Chuk_Chuk said:
Why would an ICE vehicle randomly combust? Without some sort of external trigger.

You really do believe the myth then.

jpaul · 28 Jul 2023 at 22:58

he's not the only one
LFP ev's for the win - peugot are advertising that based on safety grounds, no battery thermal runaway - global warming and hot summers in China, anyway, has contributed to li-ion EV fires;
Musk's FSD would have a greater mortality rate though.

KompuKare · 28 Jul 2023 at 23:08

Lightnix said:
Lol I didn't even realise it was Grant Shapps who sent the original letter. Grant Shapps Vs. Grant Shapps.

Yet all the Tory friendly newspapers are playing along and the car crazies love being used by the Tories in some kind of 5D chess move to blame it all on Khan.

Every time I am in the centre of London I am shocked about how many motorists have to drive through the centre. The only thing more shocking is how in zones 3-6 everything is totally centred around the too. The myth of the nice green Surrey villages - it's carmageddon in outer London.

FoxEye · 28 Jul 2023 at 23:16

delta0 said:
Does this myth really need to peddled still. You are way more likely in an already unlikely event to be burnt to a crisp in an ICE than an EV.

On a related note, the batteries in eBikes are coming under intense scrutiny atm, with fire service wanting them to be much more strictly regulated.

I wonder in that context if it's mostly the cheap Chinese knock-offs that are catching fire, tho.. I would imagine that car batteries are better regulated already.

BUDFORCE · 28 Jul 2023 at 23:17

adam cool dude said:
No but said person might go somewhere else out of principle rather than cost. To me the £12.50 is irrelevant. It is the principal of it that would put me off.

Yea I agree with you.

delta0 · 28 Jul 2023 at 23:29

FoxEye said:
On a related note, the batteries in eBikes are coming under intense scrutiny atm, with fire service wanting them to be much more strictly regulated.

I wonder in that context if it's mostly the cheap Chinese knock-offs that are catching fire, tho.. I would imagine that car batteries are better regulated already.

Those are unregulated as you mention. Very different from an EV battery that you can buy in the UK. I really don’t get the obsession with the fire risk. It has always come across as a misinformation campaign by oil companies. The evidence just isn’t there. The risks are far lower.

henry hoov3r · 28 Jul 2023 at 23:31

Colonel_Klinck said:
To be fair the oil pump went on my old (2016) van so I didn't have a lot of choice. Believe me it still hurt buying it.

Ive got a 2015 Trafic that i will need to replace. Its only got 70k on it and has never missed a beat. Part of me feels like dissolving the company and getting a job on the cards. Price of vans have doubled in 8 years, probably as a result of ULEZ and supply.

A2Z · 29 Jul 2023 at 00:02

Not been paying too much attention to all this as I don't have a need for a car, but anything to get old polutting cars off the road can only be a good thing.